Research

Vienna's urban landscape changed fundamentally in the second half of the 20th century. Under the programmatic slogan “social green”, numerous parks, open spaces for educational institutions and outdoor areas for multi-storey residential buildings were created in Vienna from 1950 onwards. In the 1970s to 1990s, international competitions were organized (e.g. Karlsplatz), large-scale new recreational spaces were created (e.g. Danube area, Wienerberg), play streets were laid out and rivers (e.g. Liesingbach) were renatured. Today, these projects represent key elements in the green space system of the City of Vienna. The Archive of Austrian Landscape Architecture LArchive preserves thousands of analogue plans and photos of these projects. The stock of plans and photos represents a unique cultural heritage, but has so far only been available in analogue form. As part of this project, high-quality digital copies of plans and photos documenting the planning and design of Vienna's open spaces from the second half of the 20th century will be produced and published in an online collection. The thus generated data will form an essential basis for the evaluation and further development of urban green structures in the context of national and international research projects and - at Viennese level - for the revision of the STEP 2025 urban development plan. At the same time, the archival material will be made accessible to a broad audience of scientists, teachers, colleagues from the field, local authorities, art historians and citizens via the online collection. The data will be transferred to the online platform for Austria's cultural heritage and to Europeana. Publication of the digitised material will raise the profile of the Archive of Austrian Landscape Architecture and the impact of the profession.

The spatial adaptability of brownfields towards reindustrialisation is emerging as a key territorial priority for Danube's regions and municipalities. There are major trends contributing to the rise of industrial manufacturing in Europe: technological advancements make it feasible and affordable, the need for circularity, shorter value chains and closed loops make it necessary, geopolitical reasons and the pandemic showed the need to reduce dependency on global value chains, for more self-sufficiency and resilience. Re-industrialisation needs to take place in the context of a circular and resource-efficient economy and environmental-friendly regional development strategies. Brown is Better than Green BBG principle) Brownfields represent already degraded land. The transformation of heavy industrial sites/polluted wastelands into post-industrial landscape is economically and technically very challenging and costly, while an adaptation for new industrial use is much more feasible. The revitalising existing brownfields for industrial or production-oriented purposes reduces the construction of new production sites in greenfields, avoiding new land use, the sealing of soil and the further loss of biodiversity in the Danube Basin. The reindustrialisation following the Brown is Better than Green principle, represents a complex planning challenge, which requires: - Co-planning and co-creation process in line with the social, environmental and economic priorities of the affected communities, strong involvement of civil society actors - Inter-institutional collaboration on different governance levels solving spatial planning, contaminations or other environment issues, embedding in transport and communication, infrastructure, building and reconstruction (permits), business support, investor management, ... - integration with regional strategies and polycentric development plans - the development of good financing concepts, relying on private-public partnerships The projects will jointly develop solutions and tools based on the Brown is Better than Green principle and integrate them into their local and institutional framework. It aims to come up with a joint strategy and an action plan taken up by organisations.

The Vienna Cottage Association was founded in 1872. In more than 150 years of development, the cottage has evolved from an alternative form of urban expansion outside the densely built-up inner districts, in a healthy location, to an elite form of housing. In the housing estate stock, this development can be traced from the apartment buildings in semidetached construction from the early years to the representative villas in detached construction of the early 20th century. Starting from the housing stock, the project examines the characteristic design characteristics of the cottage. What role do the open spaces and the existing buildings play in the urban landscape? How can specific qualities be preserved and how can the building stock develop in the future? The results of this research will be summarised in a catalogue of design criteria.